Bank’s chief knowledge officer says the tech could speed up economic development from centuries to decades

The World Bank is urging developing countries to kickstart the creation of “small AI” models, which can run on a mobile phone with low connectivity, to reap the full benefits of artificial intelligence.

While Silicon Valley big tech firms are focused on ever more sophisticated consumer products, Paschal Donohoe, the World Bank’s chief knowledge officer, said AI could also accelerate development for emerging economies – but only if it was adapted to local needs.

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The Republican state attorney general appears uniquely ill-chosen as a candidate – but he is a political survivor who could yet frustrate Democratic dreams

Depending how you look at the situation, it is either predictable that Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general and Republican candidate for US Senate, is struggling in the polls – or impressive that he is not doing worse. Beloved by hardcore Maga voters and regarded with skepticism by the broader voting public, Paxton is also puzzlingly bland. Recently, Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that the 63-year-old Paxton “may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen”. The president was endorsing him.

Yet it is Paxton’s ability to attract – and somehow scrape through – scandal that makes him a less charismatic, perhaps, but still kindred spirit of “Teflon Don”: nothing sticks. He has survived state prosecution (on securities-related charges that he settled without admitting guilt), impeachment by the Republican-led Texas legislature (on abuse-of-office charges of which he was later acquitted), and so many controversies that it can be difficult to pin down the most outrageous.

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They’re healthy, versatile, sustainable and available. Yet pea consumption in the UK is at a 50-year low. Here are the curries, dips, pasta dishes and even cakes that could turn all that around

It’s not good news for the pea farmers: pea consumption in the UK has fallen to a 50-year low. According to data from Defra, the average Briton ate just 37g of peas per week in 2025, down from 144g per week in 1975.

Though a classic British staple, peas are not for everybody. Apparently only 22% of gen Z associate peas with Britain at all (which is patently ridiculous: 90% of the peas we consume in the UK are grown here, while we produce about 160,000 tonnes for freezing alone each year).

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A new Washington DC exhibition examines how Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and more used the Bard’s work to help tell their own stories

“William Shakespeare was a black woman.” In 1985, Maya Angelou spoke these words as part of a keynote speech at a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

There, she spoke of the role poetry played in her transition from muteness as a child and how she fantasized herself triumphantly delivering Portia’s speech from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in front of her entire community at church. Though she never got the chance to perform that rendition, Angelou acknowledged her desire to deliver that rendition as part of a lifelong kinship with Shakespeare, a connection she continued to seek out throughout her life whenever she needed heartening or solace. In her eyes, Shakespeare wrote his emotionally desolate Sonnet 29 “for” her; how else could he have so aptly described the harsh realities of the Black feminine condition?

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Style of emceeing based on high-octane, ad-libbed vocals has flourished thanks to its unique way of captivating crowds

For the 2015 freshmen cohort of the history degree programme at the University of Lagos, their classmate’s first-semester presentation was so captivating that they began calling him Toby Shang, after the 16th-century Chinese dynasty he had focused on.

His crowd engagement that day had been harnessed from his high school days as a ginger-man (energiser) in a three-man band and as a private tutor. By his final year at university, his viral catchphrases and infectious energy had resulted in a hit song, Shedibalabala. Today, he is one of the self-acclaimed “evangelists and pioneers” in the Afrobeats sub-genre some are now calling Afrohype or lamba.

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Staines’s finest nailed the zeitgeist of the late 90s and early 00s, and now he’s back – but how does he fit into 2026? He discusses the backlash against his return, his worst ever interviewee and how he’s going to prevent world war two

“Can you tell people that you’re from Hustler?” Ali G asks me. “Or The Source. Or Guns & Ammo. Speaking to a Guardian journalist ain’t a good look for me in the hood.”

At Ali’s request, we are meeting in an independent chicken shop in Staines because – due to some sort of mix-up – he thought the one interview he had agreed to for his new film was Chicken Shop Date, which was “90% likely to lead to boning”. He follows this with an entirely unprintable reminiscence about the first time he and “me Julie” had sex in the disabled toilets of Egham KFC.

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SHANGHAI (ANP) - De Nederlandse baanwielrenners zijn bij de wereldkampioenschappen in Shanghai als tweede geëindigd in de medaillespiegel. De ploeg behaalde vijf keer goud, een keer zilver en een keer brons. Alleen Groot-Brittannië deed het beter met zes keer goud.

Harrie Lavreysen was net als de afgelopen jaren de beste Nederlander met zijn titels op de sprint, keirin en teamsprint (samen met Roy van den Berg en Jeffrey Hoogland). Hoogland werd voor de vijfde keer wereldkampioen op de kilometer tijdrit, het onderdeel dat titelhouder Lavreysen dit jaar oversloeg. Lorena Wiebes veroverde het goud op de scratch voordat ze door een val haar wereldtitel op het omnium kwijtraakte.

Hetty van de Wouw stelde teleur met alleen zilver op de kilometer tijdrit, na haar drie wereldtitels van vorig jaar op de sprint, tijdrit en teamsprint. Sofie van Rooijen veroverde in Shanghai het brons op de tijdrit.

Nederland was vorig jaar in Chili verreweg het beste land met negen keer goud.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De Ethiopiër Lemi Berhanu heeft de 51e editie van de marathon van Amsterdam gewonnen. Hij finishte in het Olympisch Stadion in een tijd van 2.03.33 en bleef daarmee net boven het parcoursrecord van 2.03.30.

Berhanu duelleerde in de slotfase met de Keniaan Nicholas Kipkorir. Met een versnelling kort na het 40-kilometerpunt nam de 32-jarige Ethiopiër geleidelijk afstand van de Keniaan en soleerde hij naar de zege.

PARIJS (ANP) - Bij de grote uit de hand gelopen protesten en gewelddadigheden van zaterdag zijn 1800 mensen aangehouden. Vijfhonderd politiemensen, gendarmes, ambulancemedewerkers en brandweerlieden zijn gewond geraakt, meldt minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Laurent Nuñez op X. "Helaas zijn dit voorlopige cijfers. De materiële schade is aanzienlijk, onder meer voor honderden ondernemers."

KYIV (ANP) - De Oekraïense stroom-, olie- en gasvoorzieningen zijn sinds de aankondiging van een energiebestand door Donald Trump 76 keer aangevallen door Rusland, stelt de Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky. Hij zegt dat de Verenigde Staten moeten inzien dat sanctieverlichting en deals met Rusland er alleen maar toe leiden dat de oorlog langer duurt.

In de afgelopen week heeft Rusland volgens de Oekraïense president duizenden drones, bommen en raketten ingezet. "De voornaamste doelen van deze aanvallen zijn de energievoorzieningen. De Russen proberen een black-out te veroorzaken."

Trump heeft een omstreden deal gesloten met Rusland om een grote hoeveelheid diesel op de markt te brengen. Rusland heeft volgens Zelensky in ruil niets teruggedaan. "Integendeel, ze vatten ieder signaal van een kans om geld te verdienen op als bewijs dat hun gok met de oorlog zich uitbetaalt, en dat ze kunnen blijven vechten." Zelensky vraagt om meer steun om de druk op Rusland op te voeren.

SCHIPHOL (ANP) - Een storing bij de elektrische paspoortcontrole zorgt zondag voor lange rijen op Schiphol. Dat bevestigen de luchthaven en de Koninklijke Marechaussee na berichtgeving van De Telegraaf. De zogeheten e-gates werken niet en daarom moeten alle reizigers voor een paspoortcontrole langs de balie, legt een woordvoerder van de Koninklijke Marechaussee uit.

De e-gates hebben sinds 06.00 uur zondagochtend last van de storing. De Marechaussee is aan het uitzoeken wat de oorzaak van het probleem is. "Er is op dit moment geen reden om aan te nemen dat het om een hack gaat", zegt de woordvoerder, die benadrukt dat het onderzoek nog loopt.

Alle balies zijn open en de Marechaussee doet een minder uitgebreide controle van de paspoorten. "Maar dat neemt niet alle rijen weg", stelt de woordvoerder.

Russian air defense units downed 1,015 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

BoingBoing reports:
Mark Stephens, better known under the pen name Robert X. Cringely, died last week at 73. Stephens chronicled the tech industry of the late 1980s and early 1990s — the age of Bill Gates' rise, Steve Jobs' repose, the dawn of the world wide web — and produced the famed documetary Triumph of the Nerds, based on his own bestselling Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date.

Though not the first InfoWorld columnist to write under the Cringely name, he was responsible for its persona and fought successfully to keep it after he left the magazine in 1995.

"I loved the man," writes Darth Technoid (Slashdot reader #83,199):

I first met him in the 1990s, while he was still working at InfoWorld, and we became friends immediately. He helped me get a job or two, and he was always filled with crazy (meaning really good) ideas.

I'll miss him and his creativity greatly.

Cringely answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2000. And Cringely led an interesting life, as you can tell from Slashdot's January, 2020 story Robert Cringely Attempts an Air-Launching Space Startup:

"How does a 67-year-old hack with three minor children recover from going blind, losing his home and business in a horrible fire (like 2,000 others, we are still fighting with insurance companies), while appeasing an angry crowd of Kickstarter supporters armed with pitchforks and shovels?"

That crowd still wants long-time tech pundit Robert X. Cringely to deliver on his Kickstarter-funded project to create custom Minecraft servers. So in a new blog post this week, Cringely writes that "I went looking for venture money to recapitalize MineServer and I simultaneously started a satellite launch company to fund my eventual retirement. I am not making this up..."

He's now found a Beverly Hills patron who wants to be a co-investor in the Minecraft servers, but "I will have to earn the matching money on my own, which is what I have been trying to do with my other startup, Eldorado Space."


Slashdot has often linked to Cringely's commentary over the years, as far back as 1998 and as recently as this summer. ("Tech Pundit Cringely Co-Founds Startup '2Brains Inc' to Solve LLM Hallucinations.")
July, 1999: Cringely's take on "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
April, 2009: Three Mile Island Memories
June, 2011: IBM Did Not Invent the Personal Computer
March, 2019: Cringely's Final Predictions: Apple Becomes a Financial Service and Hedge Fund
June, 2019: Cringely Predicts The End Of Broadcast TV Within A Decade

April, 2020: Not Just 'The Death of IT'. Cringely Also Predicts Layoffs For Many IT Contractors
January, 2021: Robert Cringley Predicted 'The Death of IT' in 2020. Was He Right?
June, 2023: Cringely Predicts Moore's Law Will Continue — Because of AI


But my favorite Cringely memory is Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, the full 70-minute interview from 1995 that a 40-year-old Jobs gave to Cringely during filming for Triumph of the Nerds. ("And they actually sent someone to wake up the Pope....") There's various pirated copies on YouTube and an online transcript, but only 10 minutes made the broadcast — at the time Jobs was still at NeXT after his departure from Apple. But when Cringely rediscovered the videotape, the entirety of the interview was released to theaters in 2012 six months after Steve Jobs' death.

Share your own memories of Robert Cringely in the comments...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DanÅke Carlsson posted a photo:

Europese landen liepen weg tijdens overleg tussen de 191 lidstaten van het Internationaal Monetair Fonds, toen de Russische minister sprak. Ook over de benaming van AI en over klimaatverandering als economische factor was onenigheid.

Here are the results (2015 study) from training pigeons to recognize breast cancer And the results from AI (2026) Now think about what we could have had.

Okay, this is the type of stuff that AI is probably really good at, but come'on how awesome would it have been to be building huge dove cotes again instead of data centers

Het strand bij de Brouwersdam verdwijnt in rap tempo in de zee. Rijkswaterstaat is deze maand dan ook bezig met het storten van nieuw zand: 880 duizend kuub. Toch is het alsmaar opspuiten geen definitieve oplossing: “We willen experimenteren met hoe we het zand op een natuurlijke wijze kunnen vasthouden.”

wing of kaz has added a photo to the pool:

宮崎県都城市、東霧島神社 / Tsumakirishima Shrine, Miyakonojo City, Miyazaki Prefecture